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Award Ceremony Speech

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been
awarded this year to the Yugoslav writer, Ivo Andric, who has
been acknowledged in his own country as a novelist of unusual
stature, and who in recent years has found an increasingly wide
audience as more and more of his works have come to be
translated. He was born in 1892 to a family of artisans that had
settled in Bosnia, a province still under Austrian rule when he
was a child.

As a young Serbian student, he joined the national revolutionary
movement, suffered persecution, and was imprisoned in 1914 when
the war broke out. Nevertheless, he studied at several
universities, finally obtaining his degree from Graz. For several
years he served his country in the diplomatic service; at the
outbreak of the Second World War he was the Yugoslav ambassador
in Berlin. Only a few hours after his return to Belgrade, the
city was bombed by German planes. Forced to retreat during the
German occupation, Andric nevertheless managed to survive and to
write three remarkable novels. These are generally called the
Bosnian trilogy, although they have nothing in common but their
historical setting, which is symbolized by the crescent and the
cross. The creation of this work, in the deafening roar of guns
and in the shadow of a national catastrophe whose scope then
seemed beyond calculation, is a singularly striking literary
achievement. The publication of the trilogy did not take place
until 1945.

The epic maturity of these chronicles in novel form, especially
of his masterpiece Na Drini cuprija (The Bridge on the
Drina), 1945, was preceded by a phase during which Andric,
speaking in the first person of the lyric poet, sought to express
the harsh pessimism of his young heart. It is significant that in
the isolation of his years in prison he had found the greatest
consolation in Kierkegaard. Later, in the asceticism of strict
self-discipline, he discovered the way that could lead him back
to what he called "the eternal unconscious and blessed
patrimony", a discovery that also signified the introduction into
his work of the objective epic form which he henceforth
cultivated, making himself the interpreter of those ancestral
experiences that make a people conscious of what it is.

Na Drini cuprija is the heroic story of the famous bridge
which the vizier Mehmed Pasha had built during the middle of the
sixteenth century near the Bosnian city of Visegrad. Firmly
placed on its eleven arches of light-coloured stone, richly
ornamented, and raised in the middle by a superstructure, it
proudly perpetuated the memory of an era throughout the following
eventful centuries until it was blown up in the First World War.
The vizier had wanted it to be a passage that would unite East
and West in the centre of the Ottoman Empire. Armies and caravans
would cross the Drina on this bridge, which for many generations
symbolized permanence and continuity underneath the contingencies
of history. This bridge became the scene for every important
event in this strange corner of the world. Andric's local
chronicle is amplified by the powerful voice of the river, and it
is, finally, a heroic and bloody act in world history that is
played here.

In the following work, Travnicka hronika (Bosnian Story),
1945, the action takes place at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
Here we witness the rivalry between the Austrian and French
consuls in a desolated, old-fashioned city where a Turkish vizier
has established his residence. We find ourselves in the midst of
events which bring together tragic destinies. The discontent
which stirs among the bazaars in the alleys of Travnik; the
revolts of the Serbo-Croation peasants; the religious wars
between Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews - all of this
contributes to create the atmosphere that, after a century of
tension, was going to be rent by the lightning at Sarajevo.
Again, Andric's power is revealed in the breadth of his vision
and the masterly control of his complex subject matter.

The third volume, Gospodjica (The Woman from Sarajevo),
1945, is different; it is a purely psychological study of avarice
in its pathological and demoniac aspect. It tells the story of a
merchant's daughter who lives alone in Sarajevo. Her bankrupt
father had told her on his death-bed to defend her interests
ruthlessly, since wealth is the only means of escape from the
cruelties of existence. Although the portrait is strikingly
successful, Andric here confines himself to a subject that does
not permit him a full display of his great narrative gifts. They
are revealed fully, however, in a minor work that should receive
at least a brief mention: Prokleta avilija (Devil's Yard),
1954. A story set in an Istanbul prison, it is as colourful in
its pattern as an Oriental tale and yet realistic and
convincing.

Generally speaking, Andric combines modern psychological insight
with the fatalism of the Arabian Nights. He feels a great
tenderness for mankind, but he does not shrink from horror and
violence, the most visible proof to him of the real presence of
evil in the world. As a writer he possesses a whole network of
original themes that belong only to him; he opens the chronicle
of the world, so to speak, at an unknown page, and from the depth
of the suffering souls of the Balkan slaves he appeals to our
sensibility.

In one of his novellas, a young doctor recounting his experiences
in the Bosnia of the 1920s says, "If you lie awake one whole
night in Sarajevo, you learn to distinguish the voices of the
Sarajevian night. With its rich and firm strokes the clock of the
Catholic cathedral marks the hour of two. A long minute elapses;
then you hear, a little more feeble, but shrill, the voice of the
Orthodox Church, which also sounds its two strokes. Then, a
little more harsh and far away, there is the voice of the Beg
Mosque clock; it sounds eleven strokes, eleven ghostly Turkish
hours, counted after the strange division of time in those
far-off regions. The Jews have no bell to toll their hours, and
God alone knows what time it is for them, God alone knows the
number indicated on the calendar of the Sephardims and the
Ashkenazims. Thus, even in the deep of the night, when everybody
sleeps, the world is divided; it is divided over the counting of
the lost hours of a night that is coming to an end."

Perhaps this suggestive nocturnal atmosphere also gives a key to
the chief problems that have dominated Andric's work. The study
of history and philosophy has inevitably led him to ask what
forces, in the blows and bitterness of antagonisms and conflicts,
act to fashion a people and a nation. His own spiritual attitude
is crucial in that respect. Considering these antagonisms with a
deliberate and acquired serenity, he endeavours to see them all
in the light of reason and with a profoundly human spirit. Herein
lies, in the last analysis, the major theme of all his work; from
the Balkans it brings to the entire world a stoic message, as our
generation has experienced it.

Dear Sir - It is written on your diploma that the Nobel Prize has
been bestowed upon you "for the epic force with which you have
traced themes and depicted human destinies from your country's
history." It is with great satisfaction that the Swedish Academy
honours in you a worthy representative of a linguistic area
which, up to now, has not appeared on the list of laureates.
Extending to you our most sincere congratulations, I ask you to
receive from the hands of His Majesty, the King, the Prize
awarded to you.